It’s a food stall war at the festival as Yo Shikada battles with another stall owner over monjayaki. While Kokonotsu is dragged into helping his father, an opportunity later presents itself for him to enjoy the festivities with more pleasant company.
What They Say:
Episode 7: “Summer Festival, Hotaru, and…/Summer Festival, Saya, and…”
It’s summer festival time! Hotaru plans to convert her meager 200 yen of spending money into big winnings at the die-cutting stall. Later on, Saya is very happy when Yo suggests that Kokonotsu escort her around the festival.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
It’s not quite the right season in the real world, but it’s time for a summer festival episode. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this episode is that we had a lot less of the candy encyclopedia entries and a lot more of just simple interaction between the characters.
It starts off with some broad humor as first Yo Shikada drags his son along to help open up their stall for the festival…which doesn’t sell cheap snacks. Instead, they make fried, stuffed pancake-like food (monjayaki). Kokonotsu doesn’t understand the connection, but Hotaru, hiding in a tree of all places, appears to inform him that dagashi shops in working-class neighborhoods during the Showa Era would serve monja to their customers. Fortunately, this lesson in food services at snack shops during the previous era is laced with humor as Tamai, an okonomiyaki (another filled pancake/crepe-like food) shop owner who runs a stall selling monjayaki as well comes storming up to argue with Yo (apparently this is an annual event, so Kokonotsu is fairly relaxed the whole time). Of course, the argument is just an excuse to throw in more information (about how dagashi are often used as toppings for these pancake-like foods).
Most of the episode, though, is taken up with two girls and their festival experiences. Hotaru, sheltered dagashi princess that she is, has apparently never been to one before and is thus very excited. We do not see much of her going around the festival, however, as she is short on cash and has to earn some by trying her hand at die-cutting: there’s a stall where you can try to cut out shaped pieces of candy from their pattern sheets. If you do a good job, you can earn some cash…though obviously the stall owner is going to do his best to point out all the flaws in your workmanship and avoid paying you. Hotaru, however, can cut out shapes like a pro (but of course she can, because she’s spent a great deal of time practicing at home doing this). But then she wanders off, not to be seen for a long time.
That’s because most of the second half of the episode is devoted to the other girl in Kokonotsu’s life. Saya comes along to find Kokonotsu forced to work at the Shikada stall. But Yo, who seems to be aware of Saya’s interest unlike his son, sends Kokonotsu off to walk with Saya around the festival. Here we get the usual kind of festival stuff, all of which is quite familiar to the average anime fan, since festivals turn up so very often in anime set in any place remotely like modern Japan. What’s important however is the chance to see the cuter side of Saya, free of violence and anger (that was provided in this episode a bit by Tamai earlier, who in some ways is just an older version of Saya, perhaps a preview of things to come for her later in life). It’s just too bad for Saya that Kokonotsu is completely oblivious to her feelings and that earlier in the episode, the author has placed a marker that Kokonotsu’s thoughts about Hotaru are more complex than just thinking about her as an annoyance.
This was an episode surprisingly free of candy and snack lecturing. Sure, there was some still there, with the opening segment about monja and the later info dumping about cotton candy (interesting that the Japanese seem to have learned about it from Russia) and candy apples (though their information seems slightly off, as candy apples aren’t solely for Christmas in America, though fairly common at that time). But much more important was the subtle hints and continuing connections being made between Kokonotsu and Hotaru and Kokonotsu and Saya. It’s not developing into a heavily melodramatic love triangle by any means (and that’s a good thing), but it does feel like notes are being scribbled into the margins about potential later developments.
In Summary:
It’s festival time and so Yo Shikada opens up his monja stall, which brings the usual (annual) ire from the okonomiyaki shop owner who also sells monjayaki at her stall. Who knew that pancake/crepe-like treats could create such intense competition? As a festival episode, it hits many of the standard notes, like watching the characters go around the stalls and doing festival stuff, though there were deeper purposes, as we see more of the deepening relationships between Kokonotsu and the two girls currently in his life.
Grade: A-
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 12GB RAM, Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite